RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Don't confuse USF with ICC. It's USF that you're contributing to directly on your telephone bill and ICC through your long distance payments (which relates to the att case). Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Davidson Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 8:38 PM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On 13 Mar 2007, at 20:31, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Daniel Senie wrote: A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect. That isn't *quite* the opinion that ATT have ... ... http://gigaom.com/2007/02/07/atts-free-call-bill-2-million/ Although that is people using the rural kickback as a loophole to provide free telephony to people outside the area.. still shows that regulation always comes with an unexpected effect when times, technology and ideas advance. Cheers -a
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 13 Mar 2007, at 20:31, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Daniel Senie wrote: A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect. That isn't *quite* the opinion that ATT have ... ... http://gigaom.com/2007/02/07/atts-free-call-bill-2-million/ Although that is people using the rural kickback as a loophole to provide free telephony to people outside the area.. still shows that regulation always comes with an unexpected effect when times, technology and ideas advance. Cheers -a
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
In regards to gold-plating, it makes a difference if it's average-schedule or cost-company. If it's the latter, then yes, all actual costs are including in building the rate base. Frank -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 6:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) USF has made it possible for us to serve DSL to almost every customer in our exchanges. I'm glad to hear it - the reports of how that fund is (un)used are almost overwhelmingly negative, I'm glad some folks, somewhere are benefiting from it. There's a lot not to like about USF, notably the way it encourages rural telcos to gold-plate everything to increase their rate base, but it still does the same job it's done for the past 80 years or so, make phone service in the boondocks affordable. R's, John PS: My telco has about 8000 lines, but just in case we bave a population boom, their GTD-5 switch can expand to 100,000.
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Verizon. Jamie Bowden -- It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold Hunter S Tolkien Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur Iain Bowen [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 9:45 AM To: Jamie Bowden; NANOG list Subject: RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) Jamie: Who is your ILEC? If you look at Iowa, which has move than 150 independent telephone companies, the broadband penetration rate exceeds 90% http://www.state.ia.us/government/com/util/broadband.html Frank -Original Message- From: Jamie Bowden [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 7:31 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; NANOG list Subject: RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) s/our exchanges/our urban exchanges/ And even then, not so much. I have cable or nothing, and I live in Fairfax Co. 41k line feet from my house to the exchange. In rural areas, most of the population far outside of DSL range. Jamie Bowden -- It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold Hunter S Tolkien Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur Iain Bowen [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frank Bulk Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 11:23 PM To: 'NANOG list' Subject: RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) Could you please clarify that comment? USF has made it possible for us to serve DSL to almost every customer in our exchanges. Frank -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 6:50 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Daniel Senie wrote: A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect. -- - Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Joel Jaeggli wrote: sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month. 100/10 over CAT5 ethernet (and also 100/100) is available here in Sweden for around $35+tax in quite a lot of places. Weirdly enough it's more commonly available in places where the real estate owner has a harder time renting out apartments, because it actually brings people over who wouldn't normally considering living there. Competetive advantage. Real estate owner will pay up front for the CAT5 cabling and will then bring in one or more ISPs to provide IP connectivity and switches (well, a lot of different business models are available). Real estate owner invests a few hundred dollars and gets more apartments rented out, the ISP has to bring fiber into the building/area and can then reach a lot of people with highspeed connections that give high take rates. Some ISPs that prefer CAT5 do so because of less maintenance and that the VDSL(2) equipment is actually more expensive than CAT5 cabling+ethernet switches in a lot of the cases. I think it's weird that cable(coax) is the premium service in the US, because here it's considered inferior to DSL, and it's the service you get when you don't care about performance and quality. Just the other month there was some kind of disruption on the cable system where I live, and when I called in to report it they first asked me to go check with my neighbors (beside me, and both upstairs and downstairs) before they would even take my fault report. Then they had to coordinate a time when both I and my upstair neighbor could be home from work at the same time so the technician could try to find the fault. Ended up me having basically no TV (almost unwatchable) or Telephony (cable modem wouldnt link up) for 10 days. I'm glad I had my internet connectivity via other means. I'll take star topology all days of the week, thank you. So to sum it all up, my take on the US problems is that there is too little competition in the market place. LLUB has brought a lot of competition into the marketplace here and to compete with the LLUB offerings, some other ISPs go directly with infrastructure to the curb or even directly into homes in some of the cases. -- Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/13/07, Daniel Senie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation? If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX provider? WiMAX should work very well for hilly and forested terrain - it splits the signal across any multipath that may be around, so the more the merrier (within reason).
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/14/07, Mike Hammett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Current wireless technologies have no problem with the rural aspect, just the hills and foliage. Get on a tall enough tower in a remote enough area, you can have quite a range on your wireless coverage. I'm not sure of the cost of a cell tower setup, but the cost outfitting a tower for WISP use on 3 bands is under $10k. --Mike Currently, the cost of a typical cellular Node-B is around 10k in sterling. Plus you have various infrastructure elements that don't exist in 802.world, RNCs, BSCs, and softswitches. And they cost serious money. Whereas the 802 technologies are natively IP and Ethernet, and the business layer stuff is basically the AAA and Diameter kit you already have.
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
I do admit that I haven't been keeping up on BPL technology lately, as I am not in [and know only one person living in] an area where power lines are the only cabled connection to the world. My point was more that there are areas where it's simply impractical to put out many of the today-common technologies for broadband. In British Columbia, Canada, they replaced the copper intercity network with fibre back in the early 90s. Maybe intercity is the wrong word considering I saw them running fibre 25 miles from Enderby to Mabel Lake. Look here on Google Maps http://maps.google.com/maps?f=qhl=enq=enderby+bcll=50.595007,-118.970 947spn=0.332142,0.86792 There is actually a road to Mabel lake which you can see in the satellite photo snaking through a valley of small farms. Most of those brown patches are cutblocks up in the mountains where they have harvested logs and nobody lives up there. There is a village at the intersection where a road goes south and another where the road meets the lake. At the time, a telco worker told me that they were mining copper, i.e. they chopped up and collected the copper cable after the fibre came online. When I did some work in another BC city, Prince Rupert, we faced the problem of how to get broadband into the city because the main connection was microwave bounced off a station on top of a nearby mountain. Hiway 16 into the city http://maps.google.com/maps?f=qhl=enq=prince+rupert+bcie=UTF8om=1z= 10ll=54.24597,-130.001221spn=0.380349,1.255188iwloc=addr ran for a long way with rocky cliffs above on one side and rocky cliffs below to the river on the other side. The only place to put fibre would be to plow right into the gravel fill under the pavement. I don't know if they ever did that but, in general, if people live in a location, there should be a feasible way to get fibre there. It might cost a lot, but that is another question. In mountainous areas with low population, then some form of point-to-point wireless such as microwave, wifi multihop or optical wireless can be used. Note that in really wild and hairy areas, you can get away with laying fibre on top of the ground although I doubt that any official organization would accept that. I remember a guy who lived out towards Mabel Lake who powered a water pump for his cattle by running a parallel fence wire under the power lines and stealing a few watts by induction. Really, people in remote rural areas need to band together and do the research to find out how others are solving these problems in other states, other countries and even other continents, such as Africa. --Michael Dillon
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Mar 14, 2007, at 3:02 AM, David Lesher wrote:
{re: BPL will bring competition...}
I am totally baffled by all the hype over BPL.
What is true is the utilities would wet their pants over having
same. Not for offering Internet access, but so they could read
every electric meter in realtime, and do load-shedding as well.
What they SEEM to be doing is trying to convince the Vulture
Capitalists that BPL makes sense for 'Net access, and By the way,
as long as you're paying, we'd like to use it ourselves..
But using BPL for 'Net access is well, insane.
a) It not only makes RF interference out the yingyang; it is also
highly susceptible to other RF emitters confusing it. So it's
Ahh Grasshopper ish in constantly jumping around retraining
its spectrum useage, rather like a modem on a bad line.
Ergo, unpredictable latency/throughput. That's OK for Jill
Winecooler's email baby picture sharing, and totally unacceptable
for VOIP, XM other music streaming, TV episode replays,
YouTube, etc.
b) It makes the most sense in dense neighberhoods where lots of
folks share a power trasnformer. [Each one needs a $hunt installed
to pass the data around the transformer.] I.e: Europe, and maybe
US dense surburbia/apt houses, and such. But that's exactly where
DSL cable are already available...
c) Note that the equipment installers in b) are not your average
Cable Guy. They must be $killed HV power linemen in bucket
trucks etc.
d) It won't reach DSL/cable fiber speeds Ever. So as demand grows...
I would agree. The last time I looked at the economics of this in
detail, it
would have been cheaper to have just strung fiber along the electric
lines, at least for above ground power distribution.
The system I looked at had fiber along the high voltage lines anyway,
to get enough bandwidth to the neighborhood - i.e., fiber to the
neighborhood, plus equipment there to put the data onto the copper.
After that, each transformer requires a shunt. Therefore, each
transformer requires a truck roll plus equipment to get service. And,
every time a transformer blows, a new truck roll plus equipment. And,
many line splices were good enough for power but not good enough for
data, so these had to be found and replaced. All of this required new
techs, or extensive training, as the existing techs weren't trained
for it. All of this was for fairly short run to the house, and fairly
crappy bandwidth. It seemed much more sensible to me to just run
fiber along the wires to the house (i.e., to treat the power lines as
an easement, not a data pipe), but maybe that's just me.
Regards
Marshall
--
A host is a host from coast to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
no one will talk to a host that's close[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead20915-1433
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Broadband-over-powerlines, like its cousin ethernet-over-domestic wiring, is one of those things that gets discovered every three years, hyped, oohed and aahed over, then disappears. Reason: it's a solution looking for a problem, for the reasons given above. Why not, rather than try to kludge data over high voltage, just borrow the pylons or the cable dig and use proper data networking technology? If the electricity grid is suitable for good BPL, there's probably a reasonable copperline phone network, and anyway the distances are short enough that laying cat5 isn't out of the question. And if you're in the wilds enough that you can't do DSL, then you probably can't do BPL. Something amusing in the fact that power-over-ethernet is a lot more useful than ethernet-over-power!
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Free WIFI is just a joke anyway. Most of the time when someone is referring to wanting or providing free WIFI, they don't really know what they're talking about. People like free and people dislike being tethered, thus all of the buzz around free WIFI. --Mike -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 1:45 AM To: Joe Abley Cc: Todd Vierling; Roland Dobbins; NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:15:30 EDT, Joe Abley said: This conversation has suddenly become very weird. I suggest you go and spend a year on Niue before you decide to make claims that anywhere in the US is as remote (and, for the record, there are no cables which land in Niue, fat or otherwise). We're specifically talking about the connection from where the end of the fat pipe is, be it a fiberoptic or copper or a satellite dish, and where the user is. Craig Mountain: http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=37.0836lon=-80.3281datum=nad27u=4lay er=DRGsize=ls=50 About 2 square miles, almost all trees. All the houses are marked (the little squares). How many towers do you need? How many are economically viable, especially for free wifi? http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8z=12ll=37.198612,-80.407562spn=0.19115 6,0.395164t=hom=1 To be fair, you can probably get away with hand-waving away trying to provide coverage to all the green areas - they're forested because they're too steep for either farming or building houses on, so it isn't like you will be cutting off a lot of people. about it not being there (hi, Rich!). Do the 70k people that are easy to cover in Montgomery County have free wifi? If it's so easy, why not? It's hard to find somebody who will underwrite the cost of free wifi. You can't even ask the local government to do it, because they respond with But we got everybody online on copper a *decade* ago. http://www.bev.net/about/history.php (That page dates back to 2002 or so - we got out of the ISDN business around then. Uptake rates are even higher now) We wired the town up. We're not feeling real motivated to un-wire it. Somebody wants to come in and get bits to that last 10% that none of the dozen ISPs with presences in the county have found economical ways to reach, they're welcome to do so.
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
I'd say the reason cable is more popular is because most DSL is ran by the incumbent telcos and you can't get good anything from those guys. DSL is a better technology, but the companies doing it suck. --Mike -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mikael Abrahamsson Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 2:05 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Joel Jaeggli wrote: sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month. 100/10 over CAT5 ethernet (and also 100/100) is available here in Sweden for around $35+tax in quite a lot of places. Weirdly enough it's more commonly available in places where the real estate owner has a harder time renting out apartments, because it actually brings people over who wouldn't normally considering living there. Competetive advantage. Real estate owner will pay up front for the CAT5 cabling and will then bring in one or more ISPs to provide IP connectivity and switches (well, a lot of different business models are available). Real estate owner invests a few hundred dollars and gets more apartments rented out, the ISP has to bring fiber into the building/area and can then reach a lot of people with highspeed connections that give high take rates. Some ISPs that prefer CAT5 do so because of less maintenance and that the VDSL(2) equipment is actually more expensive than CAT5 cabling+ethernet switches in a lot of the cases. I think it's weird that cable(coax) is the premium service in the US, because here it's considered inferior to DSL, and it's the service you get when you don't care about performance and quality. Just the other month there was some kind of disruption on the cable system where I live, and when I called in to report it they first asked me to go check with my neighbors (beside me, and both upstairs and downstairs) before they would even take my fault report. Then they had to coordinate a time when both I and my upstair neighbor could be home from work at the same time so the technician could try to find the fault. Ended up me having basically no TV (almost unwatchable) or Telephony (cable modem wouldnt link up) for 10 days. I'm glad I had my internet connectivity via other means. I'll take star topology all days of the week, thank you. So to sum it all up, my take on the US problems is that there is too little competition in the market place. LLUB has brought a lot of competition into the marketplace here and to compete with the LLUB offerings, some other ISPs go directly with infrastructure to the curb or even directly into homes in some of the cases. -- Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
WiMAX is minimally different than most current wireless broadband equipment. Its main selling point is higher scale, thus lower cost. Its improved RF capabilities result in maybe 10 db. --Mike -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alexander Harrowell Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:39 AM To: Daniel Senie Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On 3/13/07, Daniel Senie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation? If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX provider? WiMAX should work very well for hilly and forested terrain - it splits the signal across any multipath that may be around, so the more the merrier (within reason).
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect. I dunno. My rural ILEC which is up to its armpits in USF money, sells me a T1 for $190/mo plus tax. (Plus what their captive ISP charges for Internet). They also provide consumer DSL to most of their customers for about $30/mo, give or take this month's package promotion. If I was paying the true cost, well, I wouldn't. R's, John
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
The system I looked at had fiber along the high voltage lines anyway, to get enough bandwidth to the neighborhood - i.e., fiber to the neighborhood, plus equipment there to put the data onto the copper. After that, each transformer requires a shunt. Therefore, each transformer requires a truck roll plus equipment to get service. ... My understanding is that in North America, the average number of customers per transformer is about 4, while in Europe it's closer to 200, due both to the higher voltage and the different housing patterns. At 200 potential customers per transformer, it sorta makes sense, give or take the performance and RF issues. At four per transformer it's absurd. As someone else suggested, we might consider the fabulous success of HomePlug, which everyone uses to distribute Ethernet over their home power wiring. Oh, they don't? I wonder why not. Regards, John Levine, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor More Wiener schnitzel, please, said Tom, revealingly.
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
You are right. Video content tailored to every user is going to be the next killer app. Unfortunately, neither the telcos nor the cable companies quite get this. They are stuck to their channels and everything is priced in terms of channels. As far as Bittorrent goes, if you ever wanted to get content that is not available in the US, is there another choice? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Todd Vierling Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:58 AM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. ; Smiley highly appropriate there. The cultural diversity of the Internet-using population simply isn't capable of making BT a practical application for 99% of large, *legally* distributed data. Well, yet. And on-demand DVR-type things IMHO, this (no, not VoIP) is the killer app. Though I consider them still above the learning curve of most US consumers, the existence of the Slingbox and SageTV Placeshifter should indicate that we're getting close to the proverbial wall. -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Mar 14, 2007, at 11:22 AM, Bora Akyol wrote: Unfortunately, neither the telcos nor the cable companies quite get this. They are stuck to their channels and everything is priced in terms of channels. To be fair, part of this onus is on the content developers themselves - after all, it's easier to produce something and then have a channel take care of distribution for you, rather than having to figure it out for yourself. And of course, the channels don't want their business going away, either. To top it all off, many SPs want to become the 'channel' for their customers. Just another example of how network effects tend to lead to disintermediation, which is of course extremely disruptive to traditional distribution models. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Could you please clarify that comment? USF has made it possible for us to serve DSL to almost every customer in our exchanges. Frank -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 6:50 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Daniel Senie wrote: A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Mar 14, 2007, at 8:23 PM, Frank Bulk wrote: USF has made it possible for us to serve DSL to almost every customer in our exchanges. I'm glad to hear it - the reports of how that fund is (un)used are almost overwhelmingly negative, I'm glad some folks, somewhere are benefiting from it. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On funsec we have had a discussion on broadband providers and bandwidth limitations, pretty much what we rehearsed here. Michael brought up an interesting case from a decade ago, which speaks of some litigation issues we did not discuss. It is also interesting to hear his view as a client on been there done that. Interesting reading. Gadi. -- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:55:17 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: funsec@linuxbox.org Subject: RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users Way back when, in the late 90's I was a named plaintiff on a class action lawsuit against Hughes DirectPC. They were doing exactly what was mentioned in the article. They had this thing called a fair access policy, that would cut your speed in half if you downloaded too much, then in half again if you kept downloading, then in half again, until your speeds were much less than modem speeds. They would never tell you how much was too much, and never tell you when your speed was cut in half. I run Dumeter so I constantly watch my i-net speeds, then and now, so I knew when it was happening. If you called customer service, they'd say that everything was ok and they'd have zero knowledge of any speed throttling. They'd say, well your dish must not be aligned properly. Even when I explain to them that I'm an Engineer and used a thousand dollar meter to establish the strongest signal possible, they'd still say that it must be a problem on my end. Customer service would have zero knowledge (or deny any knowledge) of any bandwidth throttling. DirectPC's claim was exactly what the article mentions Comcast is claiming, that .1% of the users make up the majority of usage. I think DPC said something like 1% of the users took up 30% of the bandwidth. Well, I was part of the Windows 95 and Windows 98 beta teams, and was downloading a CD a week from Microsoft. That was too much downloading, I wound up using just my 28.8k modem most of the time and that would download quicker. (At that time you used a modem to upload and the satellite dish only for download at advertised speeds of 400kps fast for that time). Even after the suit was settled, I don't think they ever fully acknowledged the amount that you had to download that was deemed too much and initiated the throttling. Heck I'd use the latest Netscape install to test my speed, and that initiated the throttling, it was only 75meg if I remember correctly! The only one that really got justice was the lawyers... DPC was ordered to buy back the equipment from us, at a loss to us, if we chose to sell it back to them. I think the lawyers got a couple hundred thousand bucks out of the deal for legal fees. Mike B Michael P. Blanchard Antivirus / Security Engineer, CISSP, GCIH, CCSA-NGX, MCSE Office of Information Security Risk Management EMC ² Corporation 4400 Computer Dr. Westboro, MA 01580 -Original Message- From: Gadi Evron [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 8:29 PM To: Blanchard, Michael (InfoSec) Cc: funsec@linuxbox.org Subject: RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: wow, it's the Hughes DirectPC FAP all over again. That doesn't ring a bell? Gadi. -- beepbeep it, i leave work, stop reading sec lists and im still hearing gadi - HD Moore to Gadi Evron on IM, on Gadi's interview on npr, March 2007.
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/13/07, Gadi Evron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On funsec we have had a discussion on broadband providers and bandwidth limitations, pretty much what we rehearsed here. Critical mass is approaching. There's only so long that North American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access speeds. Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable. -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Todd Vierling wrote: Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable. not that I'm arguing (really) but what wakeup call? where is the competition pushing to provide 'better' than the local telco/cable-op is providing? what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? -Chris
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. ; And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Alexander Harrowell wrote: On 3/13/07, Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Critical mass is approaching. There's only so long that North American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access speeds. Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable. 768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock! It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks and as for who is pushing the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our 1536kb/sec download customers. What parts of the world have long since upgraded to those speeds - and how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome. I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like? -- Jeff Shultz
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. which uses all available bandwidth on the user link, and can/does play nicely with other user apps... It's not a reason for $TELCO to want to add more BW to your link though. I suppose what I was asking is: Is there a better/faster/cheaper alternative to your 2 incumbant solutions $TELCO || $CABLECO ? If there were then I bet $TELCO || $CABLECO would drop prices and speed up links... since there isn't I think we're all lucky we're not still using a 110baud coupler modem :) ; And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO. again, these are user apps that depend on the higher BW available, they don't drive the business to change, really. It seems to me that currently the DVR/on-demand folks are basically walking the ledge hoping that as they bring new features the telco's/cableco's will play nice and add bandwidth to make these services 'work'... That might not last, there certainly is no real reason that $TELCO || $CABLECO would be driven to change, aside from 'goodness of their hearts' or 'hey maybe we want to increase BW so we can offer a spiffy DVR-ish thing to our customers and get more revenue on our flagging last-mile circuits?' -Chris
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 08:27:04AM -0700, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: [...] what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. The download speed is however limited by the upload speed of the peers, which acts as its own rate-limit given that the bandwidth on broadband connections is somewhat asymmetric.
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Jeff Shultz wrote: Alexander Harrowell wrote: 768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock! If you don't like it, you can always return to dialup. It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks and as for who is pushing the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our 1536kb/sec download customers. Gamers don't really need much in bandwidth. They need the low ping times, so they *must* ensure that there is no saturation or routing overhead. Granted, there are some games that are bandwidth intensive, but everyone's busy playing WoW. Gamers are great for detecting those really hard to spot problems that only effect gaming and voip. What parts of the world have long since upgraded to those speeds - and how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome. Japan has, for one. Definitely a size difference. In US metropolitan areas we are seeing a lot more fiber to the home. The cost will never be justified in US rural areas. Just look at Oklahoma. Most connectivity in Oklahoma will actually be from Dallas or Kansas City. I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like? I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down. Jack Bates
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 13-Mar-2007, at 11:27, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. So long as most torrent clients are used to share content illicitly, that doesn't sound like much of a business driver for the DSL/CATV ISP. And so long as the average user doesn't have an alternative provider which gives better torrent sharing capabilities, there doesn't seem to be much of a risk of churn because of being torrent- unfriendly. Building high-capacity access to the home is sooner or later going to involve fibre, which is going to necessitate truck roll and digging. There's a high cost associated with that, which means there's a significant competitive disadvantage to anybody doing it in order to compete with DSL/CATV folks whose last mile costs are sunk and were paid for long ago. Residential customers are notoriously price- sensitive and low-yield. Pressure seems like it could come from either or both of two directions: there could be some new market shift which entices customers to pay substantially more for increased performance, and to do so in great numbers, to make it cost-effective for a green-fields entrant to deploy a new network, or the cost of digging up the streets could become much lower. Given that there's only so much TV one household can realistically download and watch per day, and since that amount of TV demonstrably fits within DSL- and cable-sized pipes already, I don't see the average neighbourhood throwing money around in order to get fibre to the home. On the contrary, here at least I see people switching providers in order to take advantage of bundles of phone/TV/cell which will save them $10 per month. Perhaps city planners have a role to play here. In cities where the streets are routinely dug up every spring as soon as the last snow disappears, for example, municipalities could choose to invest in equal-access conduit to reduce the cost for anybody who wants to blow fibre down them in the future. Such approaches are somewhat common in the business core, but perhaps not so much in residential areas. Joe
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 03:52:57PM +, Peter Corlett wrote: On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 08:27:04AM -0700, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: [...] what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. The download speed is however limited by the upload speed of the peers, which acts as its own rate-limit given that the bandwidth on broadband connections is somewhat asymmetric. Ideally that's how it's supposed to work, but isn't how it works as of present-day. Speaking solely about the BitTorrent protocol, upstream does not affect downstream speed. In fact, there's a BitTorrent client out there which specifically *does not* share any of the data being downloaded (thus acting as a pure leeching client): http://dcg.ethz.ch/projects/bitthief/ -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networkinghttp://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Mar 13, 2007, at 9:11 AM, Joe Abley wrote: So long as most torrent clients are used to share content illicitly, that doesn't sound like much of a business driver for the DSL/CATV ISP. And so long as the average user doesn't have an alternative provider which gives better torrent sharing capabilities, there doesn't seem to be much of a risk of churn because of being torrent-unfriendly er, that's why I put a smiley below it. Like this: ; In all seriousness, DVR-on-demand type services offered by the SPs themselves would be one driver. Right now, they're all overlay networks which the SPs don't view as being directly monetizable. If/ when they offer such services themselves, however, I, predict this will change. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 03:45:07PM +, Chris L. Morrow wrote: On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. which uses all available bandwidth on the user link, and can/does play nicely with other user apps... It's not a reason for $TELCO to want to add more BW to your link though. I suppose what I was asking is: Is there a better/faster/cheaper alternative to your 2 incumbant solutions $TELCO || $CABLECO ? If there were then I bet $TELCO || $CABLECO would drop prices and speed up links... since there isn't I think we're all lucky we're not still using a 110baud coupler modem :) This is part of the perfect storm puzzle (basically, access monopolies are weakened or cease to exist). See http://www.1-4-5.net/~dmm/talks/apricot2007/perfect_storm for the most recent incarnation of this stuff. Long story short is that this (the whole situation with access networks) is perhaps the most controversial/weakest part of the story. And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO. again, these are user apps that depend on the higher BW available, they don't drive the business to change, really. It seems to me that currently the DVR/on-demand folks are basically walking the ledge hoping that as they bring new features the telco's/cableco's will play nice and add bandwidth to make these services 'work'... That might not last, there certainly is no real reason that $TELCO || $CABLECO would be driven to change, aside from 'goodness of their hearts' or 'hey maybe we want to increase BW so we can offer a spiffy DVR-ish thing to our customers and get more revenue on our flagging last-mile circuits?' Its hard to say. There's a relatively new (well, last Feb) paper by David Levinson and Andrew Odlyzko entitled Too expensive to meter: The influence of transaction costs in transportation and communication [0] that tries to use economic theory and some historical perspective (in particular, on the funding and congestion models for roads) shed some light on this. Its worth reading as it gives some insight as to where all of this may be going, but as usual, its a cloudy crystal ball. --dmm [0] http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metering-expensive.pdf pgpo7rI6Ig3QA.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 09:13:01AM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: [...] Ideally that's how it's supposed to work, but isn't how it works as of present-day. Speaking solely about the BitTorrent protocol, upstream does not affect downstream speed. In fact, there's a BitTorrent client out there which specifically *does not* share any of the data being downloaded (thus acting as a pure leeching client): Yes, but if *everybody* did that, nobody would be uploading and thus there would be nothing being downloaded.
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joe Abley Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:11 PM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) Building high-capacity access to the home is sooner or later going to involve fibre, which is going to necessitate truck roll and digging. There's a high cost associated with that, which means there's a significant competitive disadvantage to anybody doing it in order to compete with DSL/CATV folks whose last mile costs are sunk and were paid for long ago. Residential customers are notoriously price- sensitive and low-yield. [Mills, Charles] Probably sooner in this case. Verizon is already rolling out fiber to the home (FIOS) in the Pittsburgh area. Massive truck rolls...lots of glass being strung. Chuck Charles L. Mills Senior Network Engineer Access Data Corporation / Pittsburgh, PA 15238 [EMAIL PROTECTED] / http://www.accessdc.com Hosting, Colocation, D-R and Managed Services
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Jack Bates wrote: Jeff Shultz wrote: Alexander Harrowell wrote: 768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock! If you don't like it, you can always return to dialup. It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks and as for who is pushing the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our 1536kb/sec download customers. Gamers don't really need much in bandwidth. They need the low ping times, so they *must* ensure that there is no saturation or routing overhead. Granted, there are some games that are bandwidth intensive, but everyone's busy playing WoW. Gamers are great for detecting those really hard to spot problems that only effect gaming and voip. You do need a high symbol rate because otherwise the cost of putting the next packet on the wire is itself an intolerable delay. you can only put a 1500 byte packet on 256Kb/s dsl every 47ms or so. at 1.5Mb/s it's every 8ms at 22Mb/s it's one every .5ms... People pay proportionality more to get semi-deterministic low-latency. unfortunately there aren't a low of products offered specifically cater to that market. You get your choice of 8/768 cable 6/768 dsl or maybe fios if you happen to be in the right market. What parts of the world have long since upgraded to those speeds - and how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome. Japan has, for one. Definitely a size difference. In US metropolitan areas we are seeing a lot more fiber to the home. The cost will never be justified in US rural areas. Just look at Oklahoma. Most connectivity in Oklahoma will actually be from Dallas or Kansas City. I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like? I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down. VDSL2 ITU G.993.2 supports variable and symmetric negotiation of rates. obviously distance is a factor, cause you're down to ~50Mb/s at 1000 meters. att and bell south, now att and att had vdsl rollouts that could in theory be upgraded to vdsl2. If you were in helsinki, I know Päijät-Hämeen Puhelin (php.fi) would sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month. Jack Bates
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent. ; Smiley highly appropriate there. The cultural diversity of the Internet-using population simply isn't capable of making BT a practical application for 99% of large, *legally* distributed data. Well, yet. And on-demand DVR-type things IMHO, this (no, not VoIP) is the killer app. Though I consider them still above the learning curve of most US consumers, the existence of the Slingbox and SageTV Placeshifter should indicate that we're getting close to the proverbial wall. -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Thus spake Jack Bates [EMAIL PROTECTED] I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down. That's ADSL. I have 25+25 VDSL at home. My ISP frowns on excessive uploading, though, but they were kind enough to tell me what excessive means and I happily capped my uploads at that rate. Everyone wins. So why has Ma Bell chosen to only use ADSL for consumers? Economics. Their model of having business customers subsidize residential customers relies on having at least one end of every conversation be a business customer. When both ends are residential, as in P2P, there's nobody to pay the bills and keep them afloat. That's also where the net neutrality and peering disputes come from; you only care about people using your pipes for free when your customers aren't paying the true cost to get bits to/from the peering point. By limiting residential upload speeds, they make it difficult to source content and thus keep their subsidy model on life support. At least the cablecos have a decent excuse for bad upload speeds; shared bandwidth is bad enough, but in addition 1000 nodes transmitting to 1 node is much tougher electrically than 1 node transmitting to 1000 nodes. Sooner or later, they're going to have to start shrinking cell sizes and/or allocating a heck of a lot more channels to data to keep up with demand. S Stephen Sprunk Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do. K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 12:34:12PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:45:07 -, Chris L. Morrow said: If there were then I bet $TELCO || $CABLECO would drop prices and speed up links... since there isn't I think we're all lucky we're not still using a 110baud coupler modem :) OK, what drove the improvement from the 110 baud backwater to today's US backwater? And what evidence is there that the same driver won't continue to push? The reason that we were able to get from 110b aud to V.92 without active cooperation from $TELCO was because $TELCO didn't have to do anything to make it happen. The extant copper pair was (mostly) good enough for technology to advance at the ends for quite a while. Similarly, since this was all done over the voice network, $TELCO didn't have to actively cooperate in moving the data along, beyond what they'd do for any other phone call. DSL[1] and DOCSIS require active cooperation from the carrier. Ergo, tech advancement in the carrier-assisted data transport arena is dependent on the carrier cooperating. .Matthew [1] except for alarm circuits that somehow got repurposed for point-to-point DSL circuits (or T1s, for that matter), in which case you're back to tech advancement happening in the CPE, not the medium. -- Matthew F. Ringel Sr. Network Engineer Tufts University
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
At 12:15 PM 3/13/2007, Neil J. McRae wrote: Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated There are several valid reasons, but with newer modulations more bandwidth upstream is more and more of a reality. Now if we could just turn off ISDN and POTS (and other random crazy PTT legacy) we'd have tons more! Copper has a long way to go bandwidth wise. If we turn off POTS nationwide, then there's a lot of communities which would no longer have any telecommunications services. Telephone service was extended throughout the country because of a public policy to do so. It involved subsidies (call it cost-shifting, whatever) to ensure everyone had a chance to have telephone service. The same thing COULD be done again with broadband service. But there appears to be no political will. The result is dialup over crappy POTS lines for those who don't live in cities or relatively densely populated towns. I'll use by way of example most of Berkshire County in westernmost Massachusetts. Many of the towns have never had cable TV. There is no cell phone service. In some places, satellite TV is not even available (hills, forests). Of course the FCC has been pushing a fiction that broadband over powerline will be deployed in these rural areas, but it's funny, all the trials for BPL seem to have been done in places where the housing density is high, and there's already another broadband carrier. Wireless, too, has been proposed, but in areas that still don't have cell phones, are we really to expect wireless broadband carriers to spring up? As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl.
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/13/07, Jack Bates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In US metropolitan areas we are seeing a lot more fiber to the home. That depends highly on your location. Additionally, many FTTH deployments (*cough*some parts of a company with former ticker symbol T*wheeze*) are artificially rate limited to standard US ADSL ranges. The cost will never be justified in US rural areas. Not that I'd expect it to be so. There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded. I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? It has to do with the transmitter/receiver populations. Without going into deep technical detail (frequency division multiplexing), a single talker on the cableco's end makes it much easier to channelize downstream traffic across a large number of carrier frequencies, because there's essentially zero traffic collision. On the upstream, the talkers are more like 802.11* wireless clients engaged in a babblefest. -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Matthew F. Ringel wrote: DSL[1] and DOCSIS require active cooperation from the carrier. Ergo, tech advancement in the carrier-assisted data transport arena is dependent on the carrier cooperating. Are infrastructure build-out costs any less of an issue for consumer broadband SPs who offer metered service? Is their revenue model more amenable to doing capacity-expansion buildouts, vs. all-you-can-eat (except when you eat too much, heh) revenue models? --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:11 AM, Todd Vierling wrote: There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded. Or something like WiMAX? --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Daniel Senie wrote: As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl. Various rural phone companies aside, the majority of this was accomplished in the U.S. via a regulated monopoly, and in many other countries via a government-owned regulated monopoly. Do you believe that's necessary and/or desirable in order to make broadband ubiquitous? How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation? The thing that I would observe is that on the way to deploying ubiquitous phone services most emerging markets skipped the step where they wire everything up because they simply couldn't afford it. Competing cell carriers did a lot more to put communications services in the hands of rural and urban africans than the monopoly ptt's ever did. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Todd Vierling wrote: Critical mass is approaching. There's only so long that North American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access speeds. There is the advertised speed and then the * fine print conditions. Providers in some countries have high advertised speeds, but low usage caps, fair use policies, low actual speeds to different destinations, expensive measured telephone usage charges (i.e. dialup) and various other things which aren't always included in the comparisons. The advertised speeds vary widely around the world in different markets. The actual average consumer speeds are more interesting. Nevertheless, the US is still behind. If many of US consumers were already buying the biggest pipe and were willing to pay even more for even higher speeds; would we be having this discussion? Or is the reality that US consumers are buying lower priced services even when bigger services are available. Several US Providers are very happy to sell 1Gbps and even 10Gbps to anyone in major (i.e. NFL/top 30) cities, but not at $14.95/month. 45Mbps symetrical is readily available from most COs in the US, but again not at $14.95/month. I don't know of any US provider who wants to turn away profitable business. The question is how to make it profitable.
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
At 01:33 PM 3/13/2007, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Daniel Senie wrote: As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl. Various rural phone companies aside, the majority of this was accomplished in the U.S. via a regulated monopoly, and in many other countries via a government-owned regulated monopoly. And today we have unregulated monopolies in many communities, and unregulated duopolies in the rest. Are we better off without regulation? That's unclear. Do you believe that's necessary and/or desirable in order to make broadband ubiquitous? A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. Even the electrical utilities have this kind of thing going on... there's an energy conservation charge on my electric bill that is used to pool funds that are used for energy efficiency projects. The solar panels on my roof were partially paid for by a grant from such funds. There are alternatives to close control of monopolies using mechanisms of this sort. If it's in the best interests of the country to provide universal access, then such a mechanism will likely be the way. How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation? If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX provider? It all comes back to economics. If there's an interest in providing universal access, then somehow there will have to be financial incentives for less populated areas to be covered. Verizon, Comcast, ATT and the like have no hearts and thus will not cover rural areas out of the goodness of those non-existent hearts, unless there's a financial incentive to make it worthwhile.
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/13/07, Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 3/13/07, Sean Donelan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If many of US consumers were already buying the biggest pipe and were willing to pay even more for even higher speeds; would we be having this discussion? Or is the reality that US consumers are buying lower priced services even when bigger services are available. The reality is probably more that Bah! Botched my own keystrokes there. The reality is probably that the service is available, but the slow motion of *infrastructure* network upgrades (where the CPE might not even need a change in some cases) is holding back the rest of the works. -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Sean Donelan wrote: Several US Providers are very happy to sell 1Gbps and even 10Gbps to anyone in major (i.e. NFL/top 30) cities, but not at $14.95/month. Sure, as long as you're willing to fork over the cash for CPE capable of handling OC-XX linecards. The service cost is hardly the only cost associated with buying that kind of bandwidth. It's amusing to me that we're worrying about FTTH when some of the largest carriers are still not capable of delivering ethernet handoffs in some of those same top 30 cities. Don't we need to get there first before we start wiring everyone's home with fiber and a small router with an SFP? Andrew Cruse
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 13-Mar-2007, at 14:15, Todd Vierling wrote: Depends on how rural the area is. Some parts of the US have problematic terrain and *very* sparse population; there, the cost would far outweigh the subscriber uptake. Should someone want bandwidth in such an area, powerline or satellite are probably better choices. If powerlines are an option, you're not really rural :-) However, just because you're remote doesn't mean that there aren't options in the last mile, so long as you're prepared to do something rather than just complain about others not doing it. The island of Niue in the South Pacific has had free, nation-wide wifi available for all since 2003, for example, and you don't get much more remote than Niue. Joe
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
At 02:15 PM 3/13/2007, Todd Vierling wrote: On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded. Or something like WiMAX? Depends on how rural the area is. Some parts of the US have problematic terrain and *very* sparse population; there, the cost would far outweigh the subscriber uptake. Should someone want bandwidth in such an area, powerline or satellite are probably better choices. You've mentioned powerline a few times. Care to expand on the business case for BPL? One vendor has gear which does not blanket the RF spectrum with noise (Motorola) but requires equipment on the local feeder network, thus much equipment density. Other vendors also seem to need fairly high equipment density. The trials to date have been in areas with other carriers already present, and have caused widespread RF interference (the equipment vendors have spent much PR money trying to refute the interference evidence). As for satellite, have you ever actually used a DirecPC or similar service? The latency makes such services useful mostly for casual web browsing and for email service. You can't use VPNs, VOIP, or most other more interesting services. And the companies necessarily have severe, enforced fair use throttling to ensure more than a few users can use the service. (I don't mention cell-based wireless technologies, because the providers in that market space haven't truly awakened to the possibility of fixed cell termination sites for broadband-type access. That is generally seen as a congestion threat, not an opportunity, by the carriers.) Sprint seems to be doing an OK job in this regard, actually. Their unlimited contract seems to not have strings attached like Verizon Wireless (who think unlimited means use it occasionally for email, but we really didn't mean unlimited.). If Sprint provided more cell coverage in the small towns of the Berkshires, then their EVDO service with a router and data card would be a reasonable, if a bit pricey, way to get broadband-like performance to many more people. Alas, there seems to be no economic incentive for them (or anyone else) to provide even voice wireless services in that area. Last year Verizon put up a cell site in Great Barrington, MA, resulting in an article about it in the Berkshire Eagle. First time many people had been able to use their cell phones in south Berkshire.
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO. Which, by the way, is hitting main stream. Amazon Unbox. http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=16261631 Watch movies on demand on your Tivo in (almost) real time over your internet connection.
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: we're worrying about FTTH when some of the largest carriers are still not capable of delivering ethernet handoffs in some of those same top 30 cities. so... 'ethernet handoff' to me is 'just another access media'. I had asked at one point in time about this and part of the answer was: people aren't asking for it which I thought odd since probably 50% of the people asking me for 'can you get a sales person to call me about XXX' was 'a fast-e handoff at ...' (or some form of 'ethernet'). Someone, a wise person, told me that some carriers are more interested in selling 'pipe' than access, I think he meant 'sonet pipe' or 'tdm pipe'. I think we'll see FTTX become 'just another access method' as well shortly. Afterall, what's the difference between sonet/fttX/dsX/etherX if you just talk about last-mile access? (surely gear in the lastmile matters here, but if you're rolling it out to 150M locations what's 1% more locations for 'business access'?)
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/13/07, Daniel Senie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You've mentioned powerline a few times. Care to expand on the business case for BPL? I do admit that I haven't been keeping up on BPL technology lately, as I am not in [and know only one person living in] an area where power lines are the only cabled connection to the world. My point was more that there are areas where it's simply impractical to put out many of the today-common technologies for broadband. As for satellite, have you ever actually used a DirecPC or similar service? The latency makes such services useful mostly for casual web browsing and for email service. You can't use VPNs, VOIP, or most other more interesting services. Yes, these are known limitations, and to some extent goes with the logistics of living in more remote areas. (I don't mention cell-based wireless technologies, Sprint seems to be doing an OK job in this regard, actually. Their unlimited contract seems to not have strings attached like Verizon Wireless (who think unlimited means use it occasionally for email, but we really didn't mean unlimited.). Which is a somewhat new point of view, even for Sprint. See quote from John Polivka in: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95867 I hope the carriers find from experience that fixed termination sites are more OK than they originally thought. Sprint has done a Good Thing by actually jumping for the allowance for wireless routers, and I'm watching with great interest. (Verizon has Bell roots, which readily explains why they're vehemently -- at least for now -- against true unlimited use of their EV-DO. I'm personally rooting for HSDPA from a different non-Bell-rooted provider, because I just can't give up the interchangeability of SIM cards. ;) -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:50:43 EDT, Joe Abley said: However, just because you're remote doesn't mean that there aren't options in the last mile, so long as you're prepared to do something rather than just complain about others not doing it. The island of Niue in the South Pacific has had free, nation-wide wifi available for all since 2003, for example, and you don't get much more remote than Niue. Keeping this in perspective, the CIA Factbook says that Niue had a population of 2,166 in July 2006, an area of 100 square miles (1.5 times the size of Wash DC), and a highest elevation of a whole whopping 250 feet. Meanwhile, Montgomery County, Virginia has some 85K or so people, 393 square miles, and more ridgelines and hollows than you can shake a stick at (elevations from 1,300 to 3,700 feet inclusive). Probably 70K of those people are crowded into about 40 square miles in 2 main plateaus - those are easy to cover. The other 15K people scattered across 350 square miles of ridgelines and hollows are a lot harder to cover. I posit that those 350 square miles are more remote, measured from the point the big fat cable lands at (whatever landing station Niue has, and the 2 or 3 main telco CO's here), than any point on the island of Niue. At least measured by criteria that matter to the guy engineering the towers. pgpL4aOY16g3V.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Lower frequencies such as TV whitespace and 700 MHz will greatly help the WISP of today serve areas where current wireless technologies cannot due to frequency. WiMAX will have very little coverage advantage over current wireless technologies. --Mike -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Todd Vierling Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 1:15 PM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded. Or something like WiMAX? Depends on how rural the area is. Some parts of the US have problematic terrain and *very* sparse population; there, the cost would far outweigh the subscriber uptake. Should someone want bandwidth in such an area, powerline or satellite are probably better choices. (I don't mention cell-based wireless technologies, because the providers in that market space haven't truly awakened to the possibility of fixed cell termination sites for broadband-type access. That is generally seen as a congestion threat, not an opportunity, by the carriers.) -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
Current wireless technologies have no problem with the rural aspect, just the hills and foliage. Get on a tall enough tower in a remote enough area, you can have quite a range on your wireless coverage. I'm not sure of the cost of a cell tower setup, but the cost outfitting a tower for WISP use on 3 bands is under $10k. --Mike -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Daniel Senie Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 1:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) At 01:33 PM 3/13/2007, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Daniel Senie wrote: As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl. Various rural phone companies aside, the majority of this was accomplished in the U.S. via a regulated monopoly, and in many other countries via a government-owned regulated monopoly. And today we have unregulated monopolies in many communities, and unregulated duopolies in the rest. Are we better off without regulation? That's unclear. Do you believe that's necessary and/or desirable in order to make broadband ubiquitous? A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. Even the electrical utilities have this kind of thing going on... there's an energy conservation charge on my electric bill that is used to pool funds that are used for energy efficiency projects. The solar panels on my roof were partially paid for by a grant from such funds. There are alternatives to close control of monopolies using mechanisms of this sort. If it's in the best interests of the country to provide universal access, then such a mechanism will likely be the way. How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation? If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX provider? It all comes back to economics. If there's an interest in providing universal access, then somehow there will have to be financial incentives for less populated areas to be covered. Verizon, Comcast, ATT and the like have no hearts and thus will not cover rural areas out of the goodness of those non-existent hearts, unless there's a financial incentive to make it worthwhile.
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Scott Weeks wrote: --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? Getting in late here... For us in Hawaii IPTV will drive that. for the service from the provider, or from remote places (example google-tv which may or may-not exist, just an example of 'not $TELCO')
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
-- On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? For us in Hawaii IPTV will drive that. for the service from the provider, or from remote places (example google-tv which may or may-not exist, just an example of 'not $TELCO') For service from the provider to the customer, but the bits will still goto the user. We also have the 'remote places' problem. For example: www.hawaiiweb.com/maui/html/sites/kaupo.html but for the most part population-wise we'll get to the folks homes and workplaces. Right, so because $TELCO wants to make more $$ from their customer they enable slightly more BW from PE to CE, they may provision more backbone capacity, peering capacity, or they may not. They may docsis/other-method their service into a protected piece of that PE/CE pipe, they may not... But if not for the '$TELCO wants to make more $$ from their customer' status quo would be maintained on the PE/CE link, yes? -- I'm having trouble following the whole email and hope I respond correctly, so here goes... :-) It'll be LOT more BW everywhere. We will definitely provision more peering capacity as well as backbone capacity to give the customers what they want. Also, we're not keeping the status quo on the PE/CE link. Many changes there, too. However, we're the 'worlds oldest startup' I'd imagine. Started with a grant from King Kamehameha in the 1880s, but now have been bought by private equity and tasked with revamping the company kind of in the manner of a startup, so we're atypical in that light and due to the fact that the state of Hawaii is nine islands and 1.2 million people we have a very controlled environment to serve. scott
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 13-Mar-2007, at 18:36, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Keeping this in perspective, the CIA Factbook says that Niue had a population of 2,166 in July 2006, an area of 100 square miles (1.5 times the size of Wash DC), and a highest elevation of a whole whopping 250 feet. They used to have a bunch of trees that caused unwelcome attenuation the 2.4GHz band, but cyclone Heta took care of that little problem. Meanwhile, Montgomery County, Virginia has some 85K or so people, 393 square miles, and more ridgelines and hollows than you can shake a stick at (elevations from 1,300 to 3,700 feet inclusive). Probably 70K of those people are crowded into about 40 square miles in 2 main plateaus - those are easy to cover. The other 15K people scattered across 350 square miles of ridgelines and hollows are a lot harder to cover. I posit that those 350 square miles are more remote, measured from the point the big fat cable lands at (whatever landing station Niue has, and the 2 or 3 main telco CO's here), than any point on the island of Niue. At least measured by criteria that matter to the guy engineering the towers. This conversation has suddenly become very weird. I suggest you go and spend a year on Niue before you decide to make claims that anywhere in the US is as remote (and, for the record, there are no cables which land in Niue, fat or otherwise). If there's a practical difference between Niue and Montgomery County with respect to network access, perhaps it's that Niue is home to someone who decided to build a network rather than just complain about it not being there (hi, Rich!). Do the 70k people that are easy to cover in Montgomery County have free wifi? If it's so easy, why not? Joe
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Joel Jaeggli wrote: ... I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down. VDSL2 ITU G.993.2 supports variable and symmetric negotiation of rates. obviously distance is a factor, cause you're down to ~50Mb/s at 1000 meters. att and bell south, now att and att had vdsl rollouts that could in theory be upgraded to vdsl2. If you were in helsinki, I know Päijät-Hämeen Puhelin (php.fi) would sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month. As cable was mentioned in earlier posts.. There are also (proprietary) solutions leveraging cable for symmetric 10/10 or 100/100 Mbit/s. One example I'm aware of is Teleste's ETTH technology: http://www.teleste.fi/index.phtml?page_id=1114navi_id=1114 -- Pekka Savola You each name yourselves king, yet the Netcore Oykingdom bleeds. Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:15:30 EDT, Joe Abley said: This conversation has suddenly become very weird. I suggest you go and spend a year on Niue before you decide to make claims that anywhere in the US is as remote (and, for the record, there are no cables which land in Niue, fat or otherwise). We're specifically talking about the connection from where the end of the fat pipe is, be it a fiberoptic or copper or a satellite dish, and where the user is. Craig Mountain: http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=37.0836lon=-80.3281datum=nad27u=4layer=DRGsize=ls=50 About 2 square miles, almost all trees. All the houses are marked (the little squares). How many towers do you need? How many are economically viable, especially for free wifi? http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8z=12ll=37.198612,-80.407562spn=0.191156,0.395164t=hom=1 To be fair, you can probably get away with hand-waving away trying to provide coverage to all the green areas - they're forested because they're too steep for either farming or building houses on, so it isn't like you will be cutting off a lot of people. about it not being there (hi, Rich!). Do the 70k people that are easy to cover in Montgomery County have free wifi? If it's so easy, why not? It's hard to find somebody who will underwrite the cost of free wifi. You can't even ask the local government to do it, because they respond with But we got everybody online on copper a *decade* ago. http://www.bev.net/about/history.php (That page dates back to 2002 or so - we got out of the ISDN business around then. Uptake rates are even higher now) We wired the town up. We're not feeling real motivated to un-wire it. Somebody wants to come in and get bits to that last 10% that none of the dozen ISPs with presences in the county have found economical ways to reach, they're welcome to do so. pgpqtNtoMp0os.pgp Description: PGP signature
